What Are Students Doing Behind Your Back

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Session tag: gbconf29
Backchannel


I. Descriptions of Glenbrook Students' Research Behavior

When are your students accessing GBN Library Resources?

Gale Virtual Reference Library
Most Retrieved GVRL eBooks from First Semester
Number of Retrievals
 Source
189
Dictionary of American History
164
Countries of the World and Their Leaders
57
West's Encyclopedia of American Law
55
 Americans at War
44
International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences

What questions are your students asking?




II. Descriptions of Students from Academic Research

How has the internet changed students' search process? How has it changed their behavior? Their conception of what the process involves?

A. The Classic Study on Students Information Search Process (ISP): Kuhlthau, 1988. Focused on a group of AP seniors; followed up with several in college.
  • Found that there are six stages in the search process:
  1. initiation
  2. topic selection
  3. prefocus exploration
  4. focus formulation
  5. information collection
  6. search closure/presentation
  • Found that emotions followed a predictable pattern across these stages with frustration and anxiety peaking at stage 4
  • Found that students had a hard time with the confusion and intellectual struggle required to formulate a clear focus, but once the real information collection began confidence and satisfaction emerged.

B. Two studies tried to replicate this "old" research to see how the internet has changed the ISP. (Kuhlthau, Heinstrom and Todd in 2008 and Holliday and Li in 2004).

  • The two studies both found changes in student behavior and conceptions.
  1. The ISP still seemed relevant with the same corresponding emotions. Students felt more confident as they gained more knowledge.
  2. Students often skipped the difficult "focus formulation" stage and jumped into information collection prematurely.
  3. Students relied heavily on the earliest sources they found.
  4. Students reached closure based on task completion rather than knowledge development
  5. Students conceptions of the process (that information is/should be easy to find), and their the convenience of printing out fulltext shortens the ISP.


Details are here:
http://gbn.glenbrook.k12.il.us/imc/Mar2presentation.html


III. Help Us Help Them!

Sample student search question: Why might the physical and economic conditions of the South after the war hinder its success with reconstruction?





**HELP!**


IV. Discussion